In Tiletum, you and fellow players take on the roles of rich merchants traveling throughout Europe, from Flanders to Venice, during the Golden Age of the Renaissance.
You will travel to various cities to acquire trade contracts for wool and iron, as well as a collection of their coats of arms. You must collect the required resources to fulfill contracts, invest in the construction of monumental cathedrals, gain the favor of noble families, and participate in important fairs where your main business occurs. You will also use the services of notable people who will be welcomed into your houses. You will thus gain prestige that will make you the most famous merchant of the Renaissance.
Tiletum is a dice management game in which dice have a dual function: gaining resources and performing actions. A certain number of dice will be rolled each round. On your turn, choose a die to gain the number of corresponding resources equal to the value of the die, then perform the associated action. The power of the action is inversely proportional to the value of the die, so the fewer resources you gain, the more powerful the actions you take and vice versa.
- Strong core dice system that rewards planning and chaining actions across board areas
- Rich decision space with multiple pathways to scoring
- Engaging in-dice drafting dynamic and resource-for-action tradeoffs
- Can feel meandering and occasionally sloppy due to heavy action chaining
- Turns can become very dense; pacing can suffer in late-game moments
- Color palette and aesthetic choices criticized as dull by some players
- merchant empire building, patronage and urban development
- Renaissance Europe trading networks and cathedral construction
- euro-style economic strategy with city-building progression
- Praga Caput Regni
- Troyes
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action economy and sequencing — Use a drafted die to perform multiple actions, with the number of actions tied to the die value and the opportunity to perform actions in any order
- board placement and pillars — Place pillars and houses on your personal board; some lanes require different types and placements to unlock bonuses
- Cathedral building — Spend resources to build cathedrals, earning points on build tiles and cathedral tiles
- Contract system — Trade resources to complete contracts and place contracts on your board for points and bonuses
- dice drafting — Draft dice each round to perform actions; the value of the die determines how many times you can perform the associated action, with the number of actions potentially increasing as you draft higher-valued dice
- Joker action — A flexible action that can substitute for any other action to help shape turns
- king track / turn order — Advancing on a king action track determines turn order and awards points
- Resource management — Gain and spend five resources (color-matched to dice) to fuel actions, improvements, and contracts
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Tiletum is a game for people who like to be able to do a lot of different things on their turn
- it's all about chaining together multiple actions across different parts of the board and setting yourself up for big turns later on
- the core dice System, trading actions for resources is a good decision point
- this game feels like it should be a tight Euro but is really quite Meandering at times
- the color palette is a joke, three different greys, come on!